Above: the Oasis Hotel

By the Caribbean Journal staff

With hotel development on the rise in Haiti, the country will now see its hotel school revived, thanks to a grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

The fund announced a $264,000 grant to the Oasis Foundation to revive the l’Ecole Hoteliere Haitienne (the Haiti Hotel School).

The fund has announced a total of $1.5 million in new grants to organizations bolstering the Haitian workforce.

The grants come to organizations to promote the training of workers in the hotel industry, entrepreneurs, students and teachers.

The school, which was destroyed by the earthquake, was the only comprehensive hospitality training school of its kind in the country.

Now, students can return to complete their training, along with new students pursuing a career in hospitality.

The graduates will go on to careers at the Oasis Hotel, among others.

“Just as access to jobs is crucial for Haiti’s development, local business — especially the many new hotels under construction — must have access to a skilled workforce for sustainable economic growth,” said Hildegard Epstein Cassis, the director of the Oasis Foundation. “With this grant, we will be able to provide hospitality workers with the skills essential to building back a better Haiti.”

Earlier this year, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund made a $2 million equity investment in the Oasis, a business hotel in Port-au-Prince whose construction was halted after the earthquake.

The Oasis Foundation is partnering on the project with the Haitian Hotel School and Haiti’s Ministry of Tourism, with support from USAID/Haiti Recovery Institute and Ocidental Hotels.

Also included in the grants are $914,000 for the Quisqueya University to promote entrepreneurship, and $285,646 to strengthen Haitian accountants and other professionals through information technology.